Gold E1000: Crisis Insurance or Bubble?

IS GOLD in a bubble at €1000 an ounce? Let's hope so. Because
if not, it would mean investors are right to keep bidding crisis insurance
higher.

Buying gold is like
buying an option that gives you security, liquidity and diversification when
you need it most - which is when other stores of wealth fail.

Yes, the cost of insurance - the premium on gold's option - has risen since
before the current crisis began. But that doesn't negate the need to insure
your savings.

"First, security - the absence of any credit risk is an intrinsic quality
of gold," as Hervé Hannoun, then of the Banque de France, now of the
BIS, said at the FT's
Gold Conference in mid-2000.

"Second, liquidity - in situations of political turmoil or high global
inflation, gold's liquidity is unchallenged. [And third,] diversification -
gold has shown a very low and even a negative correlation with the Dollar and
US Treasuries...it enables you to improve your risk/return profile."

Now, glancing back across the 10 years (and 590 tonnes of French central-bank
gold sales) since Hannoun spoke, that third factor - diversification - might
seem the most valuable.

After all, gold has risen 350%
vs. the Dollar since June 2000, while the S&P has lost almost one fifth.
US Treasury bonds have paid less than half the real yield of the preceding
two decades (1.8% vs. 4.4% on 10-year Treasuries).

But it's the first two attributes - security and liquidity - that make gold's
long-term diversification possible. In periods of investment stress, its security
and liquidity are unparalleled. They add up to outperformance when other, more
normally productive stores of wealth either slump (like today) or deliver grinding
losses (as they have over the last decade).

Formerly City correspondent for The Daily Reckoning in London and head of
editorial at the UK's leading financial advisory for private investors, Adrian
Ash is the head of research at BullionVault,
where you can buy gold
today vaulted in Zurich on $3 spreads and 0.8% dealing fees.

About BullionVault

BullionVault is the
secure, low-cost gold and silver exchange for private investors. It enables
you to buy and sell professional-grade bullion at live prices online, storing
your physical property in market-accredited, non-bank vaults in London, New
York and Zurich.

By February 2011, less than six years after launch, more than 21,000 people
from 97 countries used BullionVault,
owning well over 21 tonnes of physical gold (US$940m) and 140 tonnes of physical
silver (US$129m) as their outright property. There is no minimum investment
and users can deal as little as one gram at a time. Each user's unique holding
is proven, each day, by the public reconciliation of client property with formal
bullion-market bar lists.

BullionVault is a
full member of professional trade body the London Bullion Market Association
(LBMA). Its innovative online platform was recognized in 2009 by the UK's prestigious
Queen's Awards for Enterprise. In June 2010, the gold industry's key market-development
body the World Gold Council (www.gold.org)
joined with the internet and technology fund Augmentum Capital, which is backed
by the London listed Rothschild Investment Trust (RIT Capital Partners), in
making an $18.8 million (£12.5m) investment in the business.

Please Note: This article is to inform your thinking, not lead it.
Only you can decide the best place for your money, and any decision you make
will put your money at risk. Information or data included here may have already
been overtaken by events - and must be verified elsewhere - should you choose
to act on it.